Results[]
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Round | Division 2001-2003 Final |
|---|---|
| Match # | 54 |
| Match Date | Saturday, May 30th, 2009 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Super Smash Bros. Melee - 32.36% Final Fantasy X - 26.05% Kingdom Hearts - 22.04% Diablo II: Lord of Destruction - 19.83% |
| GameFAQs Expectations |
Melee first place (8pts) - 19.69% Melee second place (4pts) - 21.10% FF10 second place (8pts) - 10.56% FF10 first place (4pts) - 16.52% |
| Advancing Prediction |
Super Smash Bros. Melee - 40.79% (15,621) Final Fantasy X - 27.08% (10,371) |
If Melee were the first option in the poll, we would have had a near perfect staircase, thus the most boring 4-way match possible. But at the very least, this was fun for a few minutes... if you care about useless battles for third place. Diablo 2 fought with Kingdom Hearts for a bit, but Kingdom Hearts rebounded. Yay.
From there, Kingdom Hearts was unable to make a push to threaten for second place because of the PS2 split with FFX. It got close to FFX in round 2 because of the PS2 split going four ways, but this was only two. This split also allowed Melee to dominate for first place, giving us a round three staircase. Final Fantasy X would eventually get revenge once Ocarina entered the mix, which made up for everyone sitting through this horribly boring match.
Match Trends[]
Ngamer's Same Day Analysis[]
Match Prediction[]
X is certainly going to need to show us something here if it wants anyone's support against that brutal Ocarina/Melee/RBY Triangle of Death. Good heavens, can you imagine the kind of world-beating tear FFX is going to go on overnight against that pack? But then, will it get destroyed just as bad in the other direction once the ASV rolls in? Hm... Well since we have Melee both rounds, we can just use KH as a proxy for its co-King of the afternoon- should be a pretty good indication of how X will fare next time around. If it can end up reasonably close to Melee today, you've got to like its chances to reverse the trend when 1 Square is shifted out for 2 Nintendos. But how close is "reasonably close"? I... don't know!
Of course the same could be said of Melee- the sky's the limit here, and it's going to need to REALLY sky if it wants anyone's support for next round, considering some people aren't even all that confident about Melee v R/B/Y straight up anymore. I can't imagine SSBM having any trouble looking great here honestly... the series hasn't given us any sign of weakness all season, and this would be a really odd place to start.
As for the lower two games, my guess is that KH1 falls well back of its amazing R2 performance and allows X to widen the gap between the two significantly. This is in keeping with my "everyone's played them but nobody LOVES them" theory I used to explain KH2 dropping the ball when better competition arrived last week. In fact I think KH1's going to look weak enough here that KH1 vs KH2 will once again be up for discussion. And as for Diablo, ehh, I think that comes way down from last round as well. "Dedicated fanbase" hasn't worked out so well for SC or WoW or pretty much anything else this year, so even though DII sure seems to be the strongest of that group I'm still expecting it to get last place factor'd into a pretty poor showing, especially since Melee (and to a lesser extent KH) are going to DESTROY this day vote.
That should give us a result somewhere in the range of
- Super Smash Bros. Melee - 33.00%
- Final Fantasy X - 26.00%
- Kingdom Hearts - 20.50%
- Diablo II: Lord of Destruction - 19.50%
Seems... not so great, but oh well!
Next Day Review[]
Hmmm, really not sure what to make of that performance by Melee. I mean, the final percentage was pretty respectable, and it didn't have any real trouble distancing itself from FFX by the time it was all over. But YIKES did X ever take it apart overnight! The DSV was solid, but then bam, it fell right off a cliff again when KH started owning the ASV. And since FFX is going to do more of the same next round, and with Pokemon being right there to take the ASV... I don't know, this performance just makes it hard to say with any certainty that Melee's going to hold up better than RBY already has when OoT rolls around. I'm having a difficult time finding a way SSBM finishes anywhere but 4th place actually, something I never thought I'd be saying!